The Things We Don't Talk About
by Alexithymian
Summary: Sometimes a quiet talk by the fireplace is what every broken heart needs. Regardless of whether or not the breaker wants to hear, or indeed, is able to hear.


_'It may sound absurd, but don't be naive  
><em>_Even heroes have the right to bleed  
><em>_I may be disturbed, but won't you concede  
><em>_Even heroes have the right to dream.  
><em>_And it's not easy to be me_

_Up up and away, away from me  
><em>_Well it's alright- you can all sleep sound tonight  
><em>_I'm not crazy... or anything.'_

**- Superman by Five for Fighting**

She sits still, and the sound of loneliness is a balm to her ears and her soul. There are no raised voices, no screams of pain or rage, no hopelessly loyal faces looking towards her for leadership, no no, nothing here. No presence save what matters most beside her, and she clasps her hands for stability as much as she does to stall for time.

The flicker of the fire is not much, but it is a sound, a low constant hiss that makes her feel as if there is something else alive- it can live for her, energy and brightness and light is what has been drained out of her body. Of her life, even.

But it cannot talk. So she must talk, for it.

"Do you remember, my love?" She dares not look up, she kids herself that he looks at her with his brown eyes, familiar and devoted in the memory of what was once there. "You always spoke of me as your light. You said that I always was the brightest."

The glow on her cheeks, the illumination of her surroundings is something she shuts her eyes against. She never asked for this- had never been comfortable in the life she had carved from Kirkwall. The People's Champion, the refugee who was a noble, beacon of hope and charity and respect and-

She slams her fist to the ground, and she isn't surprised when a dull red lingers around where she contacts the ground. She's losing control, but at least it is not to the blue. Blue is the colour of madness and revenge, she has learnt, a glowing obsession that rips hearts out, or a crackling trail of madness that had warped him.

"Do you remember, my love?" She chokes on her words, hiccuping slightly on the last two words. "How we sat together on those evenings, where the wind blew through your goddamned ridiculous feathers, and you pointed at the stars, and tried to describe the purpose of constellations to me?"

She had no answer. She hadn't really expected one, nor did she believe she would ever had the self control to hear his reply, but still she ploughed on, congealing her bleeding heart into words.

"You used to be afraid to touch me, in our earlier years. You always hesitated, and it was much later in life that I finally deigned to ask why. You told me that it didn't seem real, that I was much too young for you, that you always knew you just _shouldn't_."

There had been at least a five year gap between them, but she never felt it mattered. No, what _had _mattered to her was the constant smashing of her heart against her ribcage, the tug in her stomach when he tugged his lips into a smile at the sight of her, his eyes, Maker, she had always caught trailing after her, and his hands... His touch.

"You taught me the meaning of adoration. Aveline always told me it was obsession, but Anders, I never minded." She falls quiet, staring blankly at the flickering logs, shadows dancing like they once had through the halls of her house. "You made the unthinkable bearable, with your bad jokes- Anders, how could you think that Templars giving swimming lessons would ever be funny?"

And warmth will forever be a ghost of his touch, his fingers passing over her skin, skimming across her wrist, the clasp of his hands surrounding hers in a promise.

"You always had me, Anders. I wish you believed in me. Maybe _you_ always did, but Justice never trusted someone he could not control."

Sometimes the possibilities choked her. If he hadn't accepted the deal, if he hadn't- no, it wouldn't do. The present already had enough to drive her crazy, she couldn't deal with the future she had so desperately wanted, a quiet life with her and her soulmate.

Wasn't a solid belief in love and the belief that having someone who knew you inside and out, a person who stayed by your side for seven years, a person who lived for you, a person who you woke up inhaling their hair and you thought that was the most adorable thing ever, a person who didn't mind you drooling on their arm, a person who needed you just as much as you needed him... Wasn't that the best recipe for happiness?

Instead, the aftermath had shown her life had been a recipe for madness.

They would have noticed her absence, by now. They always did. But how was she to work out her feelings, if she was never alone, how was she to figure out precisely what she wanted to say to him?

Maybe it doesn't matter anymore, she mused with the barest hint of a traitorous thought, he doesn't want to hear me.

"Maybe you can't hear me." She speaks again, voice quiet, and she turns from the movement in the shadows because she has promised herself that never again will she need to face what has become of him.

"Hawke," someone says, and it is to hide her tears, rather than a mark of her strength that she does not turn her head.

**-x-**

I always seem to write a deranged Hawke. I think this game has made me slightly deranged.

Is he alive in this story? Is he sitting beside her? Is he lying in the cold ground, next to the lives he destroyed? I don't know. Neither does my Hawke.

Thanks for reading, again. Without an outlet for my angst, there can be no peace. :3


End file.
